Do you like to read a ghost story before bedtime? Then you’re more likely to have a scary dream. If you have a scary dream in a place that is pre-disposed to being haunted, you have a greater chance of a supernatural entity visiting you in that dream. If you wake up and remember that dream, the entity may make a new friend . . . you.

The paranormal community is fond of saying its “scientific.” But where does traditional science come-in on this, if at all? Well, so far it only supports the first of these assertions– that you can cause dreams by reading before you sleep, for example. Once we venture beyond that, we cross the line from science to anecdotal paranormal evidence. That’s not supported by the scientific method, but does document incidents reported by credible experiencers and investigators using modern technology. There is in fact substantial such evidence of ghosts and dead people appearing in the dreams of the living.

If we go even further, we can speculate that if you go to sleep in a known haunted place, like some of us investigators have been known to do during their long middle-of-the-night wait for something weird to happen, entities who might be in the same room have a much greater chance of trying to communicate or make physical contact with you. Its easier and much less threatening for them when you’re asleep.

How do we prove this kind of stuff? Traditional scientists just don’t do paranormal field research. Paranormal investigators do. But up until now, the technology used by today’s ghost hunters has been used only for measuring the effects of paranormal entities who exist in certain places. Since we can’t wait for normal science to catch up with this kind of research, I’m suggesting we use our gadgets to measure not just the existence of ghosts, but for a change figure out what’s going on with us live humans. We may find out some interesting things. Its not just how do we affect them? Its how do they affect us?

Can we do an experiment to find out if ghosts or the dead really enter our dreams and become a temporary or lasting part of our consciousness? Can we test what happens when we wake up and remember our dreams? Can we find out if we’ve formed a relationship with someone who is no longer with us? Yes we can. Most dreams are not recalled, but vivid nightmares tend to wake us up! In that brief state between sleeping and wakefulness, lots of information about the dream is remembered and analyzed by the dreamer. Before they fade away, and as those memories linger before we rise, the experience can be imprinted in our brain (recorded into long-term memory). Then and only then is the dreamer most open to making a lasting connection with the entity who might have caused the dream in the first place (btw, those who don’t immediately wake up from such a nightmare will probably not remember it when they do awake).

So let’s conjure up an experiment! We’ll need a brave volunteer willing to spend the night in a paranormaly active environment, have him or her read a scary book, then go to sleep hooked up to an electroencephalograph (EEG) machine to measure their brain waves and rapid-eye movements (REM’s). If they awake from a dream during their sleep (if they don’t wake up themselves, we’ll wake them up as we’ll be able to tell they’re dreaming from their brainwaves and REM’s), we’ll then take notes while they report their experience. Others will measure the existence of any nearby phenomena while the subject was dreaming. Finally, we’ll correlate that information with whatever type of brain waves turned up on the EEG. Pretty cool, ‘eh?

What’s the worst that could happen? Nothing. No dreams; no ghosts. What’s the best? Evidence of paranormal visitation while the subject reported a dream with that entity playing a starring role!

I’ll be doing this experiment in the future. Anybody have a spare EEG machine in their garage? Who wants to be the guinea pig? In any case, I’ll have to wait until my next $15,000 to get that EEG unit. Maybe I can find a used one on E-Bay.

Who knew reading a scary story could start all this in motion? Next time you do on some dark and stormy night, be prepared for a visit when you fall asleep. “They” may be watching you read.